A B.C.-commissioned report—Expert Panel on Money Laundering in Real Estate— claimed $5.3 billion was laundered through provincial property transactions in 2018. Now, even the report’s co-author concedes the report used questionable data that is impossible to verify.
“In reality, these figures could be anywhere from approximately correct to totally off the mark,” Professor Maureen Maloney confirmed in a summer presentation.
Maloney told an audience at a Simon Fraser University (SFU) Public Square discussion forum on money laundering that her panel’s estimated figures on the amount of money being laundered were only an approximation and that definitive data was impossible to come by, according to a report in rew.ca (a Vancouver online real estate search engine and news site).
The SFU professor told the audience, “I do believe that we have probably the best estimates available, but they are only estimates. We couldn’t send out a survey to organized criminals asking them how much money they laundered and where they put the money – so we don’t have definitive data. If anybody else out there has better figures, that’s great, let’s have a conversation.”